As I have only relatively recently begun attempting astro-photography I do not have many pictures to show - and those that I have are not the worlds best at the moment! As time goes on I am hoping to add considerably to the quality and quantity of the pictures in this gallery. Some of the photos have been taken afocally with a Fuji Film MX1500 digital camera, and some are scans of prints taken using a Canon AE1 SLR camera attached to the Helios telescope. The more recent ones of Saturn, Jupiter and the moon have been taken with a Philips Toucam Pro 2 or a Meade lnuar planetary imager, (LPI) ccd unit on my Meade LX90 or my former ETX 125 telescope.

Astro-photography is considerably more difficult than you might think. Practise and experience will help improve matters, although I did read that even the experts in this field have to take many shots of the same object to obtain one decent picture. So there's hope for me yet!

Far Left. A colour image of Saturn. This is the result of stacking 1804 frames and processing in Registax. Taken using a Philips Toucam Pro 2 web camera on my Meade LX 90.

Left. A colour image of Jupiter. This picture is slightly out of focus, but some detail can be seen. Philips Toucam Pro 2, Meade LX90, stack of 1445 frames processed in Registax.

Taken using the afocal method with a Fuji Film MX1500 digital camera via a 20mm Plossl eyepiece on a Helios Explorer 200mm Newtonian telescope.
Note that the digital camera hasn't captured the reddish colour as the Canon camera has.
Eclipse of the moon, Jan 2001.

The two photos above, at left and centre, taken at prime focus with Canon AE1 and a Helios Explorer 200mm Newtonian telescope. Eclipse of the moon, Jan 2001

The two photos above taken with a Canon AE1 via a Helios Explorer 200mm
Newtonian telescope using a standard camera adaptor and a 12.5mm and 20mm
Plossl lenses respectively.

Taken using the afocal method with a Fuji Film MX1500 digital camera via a 40mm Plossl eyepiece on a Helios Explorer 200mm Newtonian telescope.

One each of Saturn and Jupiter. Taken with a Starlight Express MX5 CCD camera via  a Helios Explorer 200mm Newtonian Telescope and a 2x Barlow lens. Both are unstacked, single shots of about 3/10ths of a second exposure. As I have only just the CCD unit I will need a lot of practise to get really good shots. More pictures will follow soon.

A general view of the night sky. This was the night sky at around 9.00pm on 16th September 2004 from Thassos, one of the Greek islands. Taken with a Centon SLR camera and a 50mm lens. Tripod mounted, undriven - hence the beginnings of 'star trails'. The camera was pointing in the general direction of Lyra and the exposure time was 3 minutes. Scanned from the original slide. 

A close up of the moon through the Meade LPI and Meade ETX 125 telescope.